Salvation
by Padfoot Lives
Summary: She searches for salvation.


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Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, any of the characters, etc . . . you know the drill. They all belong to JK Rowling who had the nerve to kill Sirius (although I don't accept he's gone!)   
  
Note: One-chapter, short fic expressing something I needed to write.   
  
Summary: She searches for salvation.   
  
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**Salvation**   
  
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~I'm standing at the cemetary, alone. In front of me lie graves, many, many graves that send daggers of agony through my already battered soul. The battle is over, finally over, but what's left? Only immeasurable pain that I'm forced to bear all alone. I see names . . . names inscribed into the stone so impersonally and coldly, bringing the reality of death. And I'm reading the names.

Albus Dumbledore . . . Minerva McGonagall . . . Severus Snape . . . Fred Weaseley . . . George Weaseley . . . Harry Potter . . . Sirius Black. 

But that's not even the end of it. Losing Harry and Sirius - two people I loved most in the world - wasn't enough for the cruel fates to throw upon me. No, Ron and Ginny lie in St. Mungo's, minds irreparably broken and demented. Remus is in a coma, one that he may never wake up from, and the others are either gone or in Azkaban.

So I am unbearably alone, existing the prison of my own beating pulse and solitude. Yet I never get silence because the voices never stop, the cries and whispers and memories never cease. I don't get quiet. But I'm still here. Deadened, numb, gnawing pain is all I feel inside me. Am I alive?~

  
  
**Weeks Later:**   


I sit here in the glow of a single candle. Why? I don't know - there's something mezmerising about fire, a mysterious force that can neither be controlled nor captured. Something so seductive about a flickering flame, swaying to its secret melody, ruler of its own shadowy domain.

And it burns too. With potent, passionate, fierce heat that makes the embers glow orange and burn that passion into any connecting touch - into skin. I know, because I just pressed the glowing ember of a matchstick into my skin and felt the searing sting; the immense, hot, hot sting - so captivating and powerful despite the millimeter of heated surface touching me. Beautiful.

Don't play with fire, they say. Well, I'm not playing with it. For loss, for lack, of any other, fire can be my lover, my hypnotist, my fuel to push me through each wretched day.

I'm no pyromaniac. I'm just finding fuel to keep me going. My penknife used to be my fuel - until I lose it on the final battlefield. Rather symbolic, that I so physically and emotionally lost my fire and my life in that war . . .

It all makes me wonder. Why did I used to cut myself, press the blade deep into my skin? Why do I still ache to do it again, to watch my blood trickle out in a tide of pain? Why do I want to pick up another match and poke its burning end into my forearm? Where are these needs coming from? Are they a subconscious plea for suicide to end everything, to end all this pain? Do I believe that by drawing pain from the flesh that somehow craves it, that my searing, internal agony with lessen?

Or am I addicted? Am I addicted to the rush of feeling my warm blood flow or my skin blaze with fierce fire? Do I cherish the adrenaline simply because it proves that yes, I am still alive? Or am I simply addicted to pain because pain is all I know and pain is what makes me struggle?

I'm supposed to be the smart, clever one. But I can't answer these questions. They could all be "yes". Hell, it doesn't really matter because I'm going to keep going on like this, finding lone, solitary comfort and rare stabs of ecstasy in the flames, the blade and what they bring. Maybe my 'addiction' will kill me. Maybe that's what I want. Maybe not. Either way, I've got nothing left to lose and truth be told, I no longer care.

Maybe proof was what I wanted. The fact that I can feel, even if it's pain, proves that I'm still alive, doesn't it?

I blow out the candle, and feel the cold, numbing darkness wash over me. This is my routine, and this is my life.

This is my salvation.

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END   
  
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A/n: Please review and let me know what you guys think of this!   
  
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